


Parallel Lines

by CountlessUntruths (KaliCephirot)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, ghosts talking, post death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 11:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16262960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaliCephirot/pseuds/CountlessUntruths
Summary: You open your eyes and you can almost smell the sweet, half forgotten smell of grass, imagine you feel the breeze through your hair. In front of you, the last place you ever called a home, Godric's Hollow spreads as it was the last time you saw it, almost a whole century ago.





	Parallel Lines

There is a mercy to the Killing Curse: it is, undoubtedly, fast. One moment you are a rotting almost corpse, half forgotten in what once was a prison and where for the last decade you have been the only inmate, and the next you're simply... not anymore. Gone the ache from old bones and fractures that healed the muggle way, gone the wretched back, the bad eyesight.

You open your eyes and you can almost smell the sweet, half forgotten smell of grass, imagine you feel the breeze through your hair. In front of you, the last place you ever called a home, Godric's Hollow spreads as it was the last time you saw it, almost a whole century ago. 

"I never quite took you for a sentimental, Gellert," you hear and the voice is different, which was to be expected.

You feel yourself smiling, and it still hurts, even if you no longer have a body for it to feel pain. But pain and emotions are, after all, something mental. You turn around and think nothing of just how old he looks. Looked, perhaps, would be the better phrase: he died months before you, from what the returned letters have told you.

In your mind he still was as the last time you saw each other, before he won: red haired and tall and his eyes like blue fire, grieving even as they defeated you. 

You had wanted him to kill you then. The only person who had ever been your equal - and your better, after defeating you, oh, how you had wanted for him to be the one to kill you. And instead he had locked you away, forever, and then you had hated him and cursed his name over and over.

How melodramatic it all seems.

"And why would you think that, old friend?" you ask. It was always so easy to talk to him. It's, you think, what you have missed the most. 

From all that has changed, Albus' eyes are the same. They twinkle, and from beneath his beard you see a twitching that might be a smile. 

"You were always the one talking about facts, Gellert," he says, half turning away into an invitation to walk by his side that you would be a fool not to take.

"Facts are important," you say, and then sigh. "And the biggest fact is that facts can change, depending on how you look at them. There is not just one universal truth."

"I never quite thought I'd hear you say something like that."

You allow yourself to scoff. "With over fifty years with nothing to do except read and think, honestly, dearest, I should be offended that you would think so little of me. "

A moment of quiet. Then, in a soft, almost amused tone, Albus says: "While I do marvel that I kept my memory almost intact after all these years, I must confess... at times, I wasn't quite sure if I had made up that you used to call me that."

The place where your heart would be if you were alive and not just something not quite a ghost aches. You called him dearest. Dearest Albus, and my dear Albus, and it caught just for the sheer brilliance of making the most intelligent person you had ever known besides yourself flush in pleasure and shock. 'My dear' as you two whispered in the dark not only about your plans but about silly, teenager things of bright, warm, hopeful things that never were to come; dearest as he looked at you and your breath caught: dearest Albus when you curled a hand deep in his red hair and brought him close to you so you could kiss him.

You have had over fifty years and nothing but solitude and books and letters and time, time that stretched for what seemed forever to think and remember and yearn until you could have painted those beautiful, fragile weeks when the two of you were just children and had promised each other forever. 

The teasing falls from you like feathers from a phoenix. It feels old, and if this is the end, this time, at least, you would stand bare. 

"I didn't lie, you know."

"When do you mean?" Albus says. You turn to look at him a little. The sun is starting to come out through the village. If this was the actual village and not just the last refuge of your withered soul, people would start waking out. Villages and little towns always rose early. 

As it is, you can see the way the sunrise turns his white hair orange, and it's close enough to the color you remember from before.

"When I said I loved you," you say, and watch his face freeze for a moment: maybe you haven't seen him in over fifty years, but you knew him better than anyone else had and you still manage to catch a moment of shock and you smile at still being able to surprise him, Albus Dumbledore, even if this is to be the last time. "You were the most beautiful, most brilliant wizard I had ever known. Among all the plans I made, that was never one of them and it never had any other reason to be except that I did."

And with that, your last regret is gone, its shackles falling to the metaphorical ground. You have no idea what comes next, but it can hardly be worse than what you have lived. 

"I suppose I should keep going," you say, taking a deep breath that tastes like magic and starlight. 

You hear Albus sigh.

"I can't quite go with you just yet, old friend," he says, his eyes serious for a moment, but then he smiles at you. "But I don't imagine it will be too long now, dear Gellert. "

"It's been close to sixty years, dearest. I don't suppose a few months would matter," You laugh. "I'll see you on the other side."


End file.
